Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Alphabet Quiet Book: ABC Block Train Title Page

This post is the fourteenth in a series about the alphabet quiet book I'm making with the girls for preschool this year. To read the introduction, click here, and to read the rest of the posts (updated on a weekly basis) click the "Quiet Book" label on the right.

With the completion of L is for Laundry, the first volume of our quiet book was filled! Technically, of course, M and N mark the middle of the alphabet, but because there were more two-page spreads in the first half of our alphabet quiet book than I have planned for the second, I decided to end it with L. I had plans for M and N to work together in a page spread, so I needed to come up with a title page to begin the second volume.

Trains are a traditional quiet book page that I wanted to include, but ran out of room when I outlined the ideas I had for each letter of the alphabet. Making a train pulling alphabet block cars seemed like a good way to both start off the second volume of the alphabet book, and to slip a train in as well.

My train comes partly from the excellent Circus Train template on Imagine Our Life, and partly from tracing my girls' actual alphabet blocks. First I traced the outline and letter shapes from the ABC and XYZ alphabet blocks onto freezer paper. Then I scaled the engine and cars from the train template to match on my computer, and traced them directly from my laptop screen onto freezer paper. After all, a laptop is an awful lot like a light box, as long as you treat it gently!

Once I had my freezer paper pattern, I ironed the pieces to the appropriate colors of felt, and cut out all the pieces. I cut out some squares of slightly darker tan to set the alphabet block cars apart from the cream colored background. The contrast wasn't quite as strong as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing.

With so many pieces, it was a bit tedious to sew together (there are seventeen buttons alone!), but it came together to make a clean, simple look, and a sturdy, easy-care title page. Many of the pages coming up tend toward the busier side of the spectrum, so it was nice to start out the second volume with something uncomplicated like this.

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This is the story

of how six Hobbits had an Adventure, and found themselves doing and saying things altogether unexpected. They may have lost their neighbors' respect, but they gained - well, you will see whether they gained anything in the end.